To do development in your main user account, I am providing the structure and changes to your home directory config. Some commands below won't make sense for now, but I explain them in the next section "Using the Environment"

Make Directory Structure:

1. make -p ~/kde/srv/trunk
2. make -p ~/kde/build
3. make -p ~/kde/bin

Download the setup files attached and copy them to these locations:

1. cp src-env ~/kde/src
2. cp findup ~/kde/bin
3. cp my-setup ~/kde/src/trunk/.my-setup
4. chmod 0755 ~/kde/bin/findup

KDE4 needs a base set of software installed on the system to allow compilation of all the source. I have compiled a semi list here that should allow for building. I want to make it clear that these packages are in addition to having KDE4 already installed. If you have not installed or are not using KDE4 yet then run the following commands:

su -
< enter password >
apt-get install kde-full

Setting up Debian to develop for KDE4 isn't a hard task at all. A few changes to the user account's home directory and installing some packages is all that is really needed. I like using Debian Unstable (Sid) for KDE4 development if using the trunk (main development) branch. This is because kde4 truck (no referred to as just "trunk") requires a lot of new software that is not back ported to the main Debian stable repo. To keep from running lots of source builds for dependencies, I recommend using Debian Unstable.

This is a quick guide to my current KDE4 development setup. This is written in part because all the guides even on http://www.kde.org seem to leave out minor details that leave some people in complete confusion about how to setup KDE4 development environments. Also, my memory sometimes fails so its going to be a guide that I myself can use to bring my systems back up when I reinstall Linux.